Ethics

Islamic ethics is to be found in an enormous range of materials from Qur’ānic exegesis to kalām, from philosophical commentaries on Aristotle to Sufi mystical texts. One might present an historical overview, perhaps subdivided by type of theory. The most recent, comprehensive work on the subject proceeds in just such a manner. Fakhry (1991) divides Islamic ethics into four parts – scriptural morality, theological ethics, philosophical ethics and religious ethics – as he presents his version of the story. I propose, however, to proceed in a rather different manner, eschewing the history of ideas in favour of a more selective approach which will highlight in some detail the views of some major Muslim philosophers on a single philosophical problem: the nature of the human good and its relation to the political order. This problem is without doubt the most important one in the ethical/political tradition in which one must locate the Muslim philosophers, namely the Greek moral philosophical tradition. It is to this latter, thus, that one must turn to set the grounds for the later medieval Muslim elaborations.